Act Ticket says the law makes their business operate under a legal grey area and ignores the reality of the market. If people don’t buy from their legitimate business, they’ll go to the black market instead. Ticket resellers estimate that one third of their tickets are sold under face value.

Consumer interest groups are also proposing laws that ban paperless tickets, let fans know how many tickets have been released at their favorite concert, and let customers get refunds if there are ticketing problems.

“The secondary market should have consumer protections so that if things don’t go right, consumers get a counterfeit ticket, or you have bad actors who want to game the system, that they are held into account and consumer are protected as much as possible,” said National Consumers League Public Policy Vice President John Breyault.

The National Consumers League is also trying to ban a practice known as geo-limiting of tickets. That is, some sports teams are beginning to limit ticket sales based on where you live to attract home team fans rather than opposing team fans. The Consumers League argues this just leads to jacked up prices for out-of-state customers.

No one at the hearing before the state Legislature’s Consumer Protection Committee testified in favor of keeping the law as is.